Former Ombudsman beats contempt raps

The Sandiganbayan 2nd Division on Thursday dismissed a petition to cite in contempt two vocal critics of the plea bargain on the Carlos Garcia plunder case, even though it said the inaccurate information they had spread concerning the deal had caused the court to suffer criticism.

Cleared of indirect contempt were ex-Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo and former Special Prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio, who had written President Benigno Aquino III to ask him to intervene in the Garcia plunder case and to stop the plea bargain.

The petition to cite them in contempt was filed by the Office of the Ombudsman through Special Prosecutor Wendell Sulit, who said that the reputation of the prosecutors and the court had been besmirched as a result of the wrong information spread by Marcelo and Villa-Ignacio.

According to Sulit, Marcelo and Villa-Ignacio had falsely claimed in the letter to the President that Garcia had filed a demurrer to evidence which had been dismissed, which would thus indicate that the plunder case against him was strong.

A demurrer is a pleading by a party to a legal action that assumes the facts of the opposite party’s arguments but claims that they are insufficient in law to sustain the claim based upon them.

Marcelo and Villaignacio publicly apologized for the mistake.

In the ruling handed down yesterday, the Sandiganbayan said the letter of Marcelo and Villa-Ignacio did not in any way influence the court on how to rule on the plea bargain, so the administration of justice was not impeded.

The court decided not to cite Marcelo and Villa-Ignacio in contempt even though it described their acts as “contemptuous.”

The court said the letter they had written led to the smearing, if not the ruining, of the justices’ integrity and reputation.

It said no amount of punishment would erase the mark left on the court and individual justices.

But in the spirit of magnanimity, the court said it would not impose any sanction for Marcelo’s and Villa-Ignacio’s contemptuous acts and was choosing “to entrust their redemption to time and future events.”